


Every Creeping Thing

by sanguinity



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Discussion of addiction, Gen, Story: The Adventure of the Creeping Man, mention of sexual assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-03-20 00:51:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3630546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguinity/pseuds/sanguinity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When one tries to rise above one's own nature, one is liable to fall below it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Creeping Thing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amindamazed (hophophop)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hophophop/gifts).



> Presumes that Doyle’s “[The Adventure of the Creeping Man](http://wikilivres.ca/wiki/The_Adventure_of_the_Creeping_Man)” happened more-or-less straight up as an Elementary case. Nevertheless, this is more closely inspired by details of Bert Coules’ adaptation than by Doyle’s original.
> 
> Oh, and lest people be confused by the shared names in the two works: this story has nothing to do with the characters, events, or plot of [Holocene Park](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2253183). (What can I say? When I wrote that one, I never imagined I'd later have serious feelings about Creeping Man.)
> 
> Also posted [on Tumblr](http://sanguinarysanguinity.tumblr.com/post/114858373095/every-creeping-thing).

Watson closed behind her the door to Presbury’s impromptu sickroom, then let out a shuddering sigh and slumped against the wall. “God. I have seen some things on my trauma rotations, but  _that_ …”

Sherlock looked up from the business card he had been flashing in and out of sight. Only a backpalm vanish and reproduction, a pair of moves he had mastered decades before, but the rhythm of it was soothing. “I’m surprised. I would have thought you had seen far worse in your ER rotations, Watson, than a torn throat.”

Watson shook her head. 

Ah. She hadn’t meant Presbury’s shredded throat at all, then, but the earlier events of the night. 

“He was lucky,” she elaborated, “that was as superficial an injury as it’s possible to have after someone’s pulled a mastiff off your neck. He should still go to the hospital, though.”

“He won’t.”  _One, two, vanish. One, two, reproduce._  “He doesn’t want a public record made of his private shame. I can empathize.”

On another night she might have glanced at him then—normally, she was highly responsive to his emotional state—but tonight she was was still caught up in her own, apparently visceral, horror. _“That_  is why institutional review boards were invented,” she said, nodding at Presbury’s door, but referring to his self-experimentation with monkey serum.

“Hardly.”  _One, two, vanish._ “IRBs don’t concern themselves with the ethics of the research itself, only the ethics of the methodology. And even that they don’t do particularly effectively, pitted as they are against the coercive influence of capitalism. Would an IRB have put the kibosh on the Manhattan Project? Or even the testing at Bikini? I think not.”  _One, two—_

Sherlock’s hand cramped, and he fumbled the reproduction.

He leaned down to pick the card up off the floor. His fingers were not nearly so deft now as they had been at twelve, when he had first attempted to acquire friends by secluding himself in his room and practicing card tricks. In the end, the promise of popularity through the art of illusion had proved—he paused to savor the pun— _illusory_ , but he had still been seduced by the sensation of control that card manipulation had provided. Escapology proved to be the greater high—more physically immersive, more sense of control, more triumph when a move was mastered—but one never truly left behind sleight-of-hand, not after long hours of practice had burned it into one’s muscle memory. Although—

His fingers cramped again: perhaps from suggestion this time. He rippled his fingers through a dexterity exercise, attempting to ease the cramp.  _Although._  It was likely that time would eventually force him to leave behind sleight-of-hand. A mere decade ago, the prospect would not have been real to him, but presumably nerve degradation, or even arthritis, would someday become a stronger influence on his card manipulations than mere muscle memory. He shook out his hand and returned to the rhythm of vanishing and reproducing the business card.

“When I think of his fiancee,” Watson said, one arm wrapped around herself. He waited, but she left the sentence incomplete. “What the hell is wrong with Viagra, that’s what I want to know.”

The physicality of Watson’s horror became clearer: she was identifying with Alicia Morphy. Watson had never given him any definite reason to believe that she was a survivor of sexual assault, but statistically, it was unlikely that she had come this far in her life entirely unscathed. The prospect of a man-ape, large and strong, with reduced emotional inhibitions… Sherlock grimaced. It was well that they had interrupted this when they had.

“It is all very  _King Kong,_  is it not?” Sherlock asked, and only heard the callousness of it after Watson shot a look at him. “Or  _The Island of Doctor Moreau,_  I can’t decide. In any case, I imagine he felt a need to keep up with her in more ways than merely the bedroom.” He grimaced. “Three times now, Watson, our investigations have led us to a man attempting to discover an elixir of life. It is a compelling hope.”

She sighed. “At least this one didn’t murder anyone along the way.”

Watson was remembering Marissa Ledbetter, then, from Watson’s previous life as a surgeon. Marissa Ledbetter, plus several more unfortunates, all victims of another cursed attempt to create an elixir of life. Watson was feeling this case personally. Not that Sherlock was doing much better.

“No, the people around him have been spared at least that much,” he agreed. “But as I said, I can empathize with Presbury’s position.” This time Watson looked at him. “Our work, as you know, is mostly cerebral, but cerebral processes are fundamentally physical in nature, and the acquisition and perception of data is fundamentally physical, as well. Not to mention our occasional encounters with third parties who wish us dead. I know I have a tendency to regard the body as transport—”

Watson snorted. “I’m surprised you’re even admitting your brain is part of your body.”

It was an old argument between them. Back when he had resented her interference in his life, he had taken that ludicrous position solely to annoy her. Since then, he mostly brought it up for the comfort of her response. “But if the day should come when the transport fails to the point of preventing me from engaging in my work? To every thing there may be a season, Watson, but when there is nothing better for a man to rejoice in but his own works… No, I have turned to drugs when my mind failed me. It is not inconceivable that I might do so again if my body were to fail me, ‘transport’ or no.” He glanced at her. “When one tries to rise above one’s nature, one is liable to fall below it.”

She considered him quietly, then nodded at the card in his hand. “Helmdale?”

He glanced down at it. The card had acquired a bow from the repeated backpalm; the two leading corners had begun to soften. Professor Presbury cared about status and appearances; it would be best to give him a pristine one. He backpalmed it again. “The time between Presbury’s doses was becoming shorter, his behavior more erratic. You noted the pattern as well as I.”

“Habituating to the serum,” she nodded.

“The descent to Hades is easy,” he quoted, “but the climb back out…” He held up the Helmdale card. He declined to put a cheap flourish on the movement, despite knowing four that would do.

“Well, someone’s got a bad case of philosophy tonight. Although I can’t deny that  _that,”_  she glanced at the closed door beside her, “would bring it out in nearly anyone.” A residual shudder flowed through her frame, but to Sherlock’s eye, she had shaken off the worst of her first, visceral reaction to Presbury’s self-experimentation. 

She pushed off the wall and took the three steps to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him, or as close to shoulder-to-shoulder as her inferior height would permit. “I’m sure the fine professionals at Helmdale will relish the opportunity to help someone kick monkey serum. It’ll be a break from the usual run of things they get there.” She touched his elbow, her fingers barely there before they were gone again. “I’ll be out front when you’re ready.”

He nodded. When he emerged, she would be seated on the bench by the entrance. Two-thirds along, leaving space for him to join her. He would not join her, however; it was not a sharing-a-bench sort of night. He would leave this blighted house directly, pausing only long enough for her to fall into step beside him. She would anticipate his desire to leave, of course, but leaving space for him on the bench… it was the symbol of the thing. The haptic shorthand of it, if one will.

If Presbury was lucky, his family might remain beside him through his convalescence and recovery. If he was very lucky indeed, he might learn that Alicia Morphy wanted the man he actually was, not the man who he had tried, and failed, to be. Sherlock had only just managed to learn that himself, despite Watson giving him every opportunity to do so.

Sherlock listened to Watson open and close a door elsewhere in the house. Then he pushed open the door to Professor Presbury’s room, to get the Helmdale recommendation over and done with.


End file.
